Packing and planning

Hey, it's spring break! And we're getting ready for our epic trip to Arizona (and New Mexico and Utah and of course Colorado). It is going to be a true Four Corners trip, except that I don't think we're going to the actual Four Corners site. Teen B said he wanted to go (we've been there once before), but he changed his mind when he heard that it would add significant mileage to the trip.

Rocket Boy arrived last night around 11 pm -- he'd been driving all day, did some of Missouri, all of Kansas, and of course the Colorado leg, all in one day. I think he's too old to push himself like that, but he made it, driving this enormous rented minivan which I am now afraid to drive, but I'll do it. I can probably manage it for highway driving. It's a Chrysler Pacifica and it's about 40 feet long. It has three rows of seats, plus a cargo area behind the third row. It probably gets terrible gas mileage. Oh well, this trip is going to cost a lot of money, there's no way around that.

We finally made hotel reservations for four of the five nights we're going to be gone. Rocket Boy was all for winging it, but I wore him down. He simply could not understand that it's hard to find what we need (and you have to grab it when you find it): a room or suite with three beds or two beds and a sofabed, or possibly two small rooms with two beds each (so we can divide up and each take a twin). He still thinks the kids are about eight years old and able to share beds with us. I remember those days, but they're over.

• Monday night we'll be in a Best Western in the Albuquerque area (two beds and a sofabed).
• Tuesday and Wednesday night we'll be in a Best Western in the Tucson area (two beds and a sofabed).
• Thursday night we're staying in a historic (1899) hotel in northern Arizona -- Rocket Boy hates to stay in cookie cutter hotels, so he found this one (two beds and a trundle bed) and I said OK. Of course it doesn't have a pool, or a free breakfast, or even a parking lot, and our rooms are over a bar, which stays open until midnight. It's OK -- it will be an experience, and "experiences" are what we're going for on this trip.
• Friday night we're leaving open. I think we're going to be near Monticello, Utah that night, and TripAdvisor warned me that hotels in that area are filling up, so we may have to sleep in the car. But hey, that would be an experience too.
• Saturday night we are SUPPOSED to be back in Boulder. We'll see. If we sleep in the car Friday night, we may have some trouble driving 417 miles on Saturday.
  
• Sunday we return the rental car to the airport.
  
• Monday the kids go back to school.
• And on Tuesday, Rocket Boy flies back to St. Louis.
   

My to-do list is in good shape, which is why I'm taking a little break to write a blog post. The main thing I still need to do is pack, which I'll stop and work on in a few minutes. I've made a packing list, and I've done a lot of laundry in the last couple of days. (Just now I took a break and packed the twins' suitcases.) The cat sitters came and got the key, and I still need to do a few cat things: clean the litter boxes once more, set out the dishes and food and instructions (already printed out). 

There's always something that goes wrong before a trip. I think Rocket Boy's car disaster was probably the main problem -- so far -- but a smaller problem has been swim suits. Both boys have outgrown their suits, so we went to Target yesterday to get new ones, but we couldn't find the men's swimwear section and there was no one to ask and the kids kept bugging me to leave (Teen A in particular always seems to want to leave a store as soon as he gets there). There was one size M men's trunks mixed in with the kids' suits, and it was a good color (i.e., black), so we bought that for Teen A, and then I also bought a size XL kids' suit for Teen B, even though it looked small. He tried it on when we got home and of course it was too small.

So today I went BACK to Target, returned the too small suit, hunted all over the men's department, finally asked a clerk and she directed me to the swim trunks, and I picked out two possible pairs for Teen B. Took them home, he thought the size S (which fit perfectly) was too small, but he liked the size M (much too large and baggy), so we're keeping that one. 

I decided I can return the other suit to Target in April. It will be fine.

So that's about it. I thought about calling my credit card company and telling them about the trip, but then I figured they already know, what with all the hotel reservations I've put on the card. I got $300 in cash at the ATM -- figure $50/day for snacks and whatnot. I'll charge all our dinners. We are going to be paying for this trip for months and months.

***

What else? It was an OK week. I made a giant to-do list and worked along on it peacefully each day. On Tuesday I saw the orthodontist and got bright green bands on my braces, but unfortunately that included another horrible "chain" on the lower teeth. I couldn't sleep without painkillers for a couple of nights, but I'm better now. Still, I'm going to aim for mostly soft food on the trip.

Teen B and I went to see "Mary Poppins" at the kids' school Thursday night. It was an amazingly professional production, but so long -- three hours, on a school night. I yawned through the last hour, even though I was enjoying it. I was amused by the biographies of the cast and crew: out of 40-some kids, I counted 8 who used they/them pronouns. I'm glad we live in a place where kids are free to explore themselves that way. And I always compare it to my own high school experience: how many kids would have used they/them pronouns back then if they could? if it were even a thing?

"Mary Poppins" seemed to me like a very prim, old-fashioned show for the high school to put on, especially with everything that's been going on this year: the suicides, the fake shootings, and most recently the fires and explosions caused by propane tanks in the homeless encampment down the street from the school. Putting on "Mary Poppins" reminded me of when my high school put on "Bells Are Ringing" as the spring musical. So wholesome! So completely unlike modern life! But I guess that's true about most musicals. 

After the third explosion & fire, the city finally told the homeless people they had to go -- no more encampments so close to a school. I don't know where they went, but they're gone, for now.

***

Rocket Boy and I have already had several fights (mostly about hotel choices). I've put my head in my hands and said "No, no, no," and I've laughed hysterically at something he did or said. It is very nice to have him home. The cats don't think so -- last night Baby Kitty tried so hard to sleep next to me, but there simply wasn't room on the bed. I don't know where he and Sillers spent the night. Well, for five nights they'll have the bed to themselves.

Spring approaches

Tomorrow is the first day of Spring! It feels like it, too -- cold, and windy, and yet with that freshness in the air. This coming week we have either a chance of rain or a chance of snow every day from Wednesday to Sunday, and that's very spring-like too. Still, it's not like March in the old days. Where's our heavy snowfall? Will that happen the last week of March, when we're gone? (It could.)

Yes, we are going to Arizona for spring break, it's really happening. We have enough plans in place now that I think we are really going to do something. Yesterday Rocket Boy and I went back and forth over whether he should rent a car and drive out here or fly out and then drive my car, and we finally hung up without making a decision. Then, this morning, I woke up knowing what he should do: rent a car, drive out here, do the trip, and then drop the car off at the Denver airport and fly back. I called him at 9 am (10 am his time) to tell him my wonderful idea and discovered he was on hold with Enterprise, having had exactly the same idea.

What can I say -- great minds think alike? or, this is why we're married? Or maybe it was the obvious idea all along, but we both needed a good night's sleep to be able to come up with it.

Anyway, the reason Rocket Boy isn't driving his OWN car on the trip is that it was smashed into a few nights ago, at 3 am, while parked in front of his house in St. Louis. Joy-riders, being chased by the police. They all scampered off into neighbors' yards after the crash, and no one was caught, and no one's claimed the car.

It's not in terrible shape -- the repair estimate is $1100, compared to the other car, which is totaled -- but he doesn't think he should take it on a long drive before it's fixed. So instead he's going to rent a minivan, so that we all have plenty of room to stretch out and not kill each other. He's going to pay for it (it's not going to be cheap). And my credit card will pay for everything else: gas, hotel rooms, meals and snacks, entertainment, and the cat-sitters.

Oh, one other good thing: Rocket Boy's plane ticket won't cost him anything. He finally has enough "miles" on Southwest for a free ticket. Whoop de doo.

It would be a lot cheaper if he'd fly both ways and we take my car. But my car is 16 years old and I need it to go on running. What if my car dies in southern Arizona? If we have car trouble in the rented minivan, we can exchange it for a replacement. So maybe this is the best way to go.

The bottom line is that it's important to us to travel, and expose our kids to interesting experiences. And we don't have many more years to do that with them. So it's worth it. Just a little bit terrifying, thinking of all the money we'll owe our credit card companies.

***

This week is going to be devoted to getting ready for the trip, so my mind is buzzing about that. Mostly it's a timing issue: when to do the laundry so we have the maximum number of clean clothes available to pack. If I do my laundry on Saturday and the twins' laundry on Sunday, that should work. I'll need to empty the fridge, so I must take that into account when planning meals. Must make packing lists. Must vacuum and dust and tidy up (for Rocket Boy and for the cat sitters). Must research hotels. I should probably make a reservation for Monday night in Albuquerque and possibly Tuesday/Wednesday in Tucson. Rocket Boy doesn't like to plan ahead like that, but with four people, two of them teenagers, I find it's better. I'll see.

Rocket Boy should arrive on Sunday afternoon and then we'll leave Monday morning -- that sounds awful, but I'll do the driving that day. Just head straight down I-25 to Albuquerque. Tuesday we'll drive to Tucson, Wednesday we'll hang out in Tucson, Thursday we'll go to Phoenix, and Clarkdale, Friday we'll see the Grand Canyon and start driving home, and Saturday we'll get home. Something like that. Rocket Boy has all these mines and canyons and things that he wants to see. I plan to be pretty flexible. I don't have particular things I want to do except for the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, which is really cool, but I know he wants to do that too. Oh, and I also want to look for birds, but I can do that anywhere. I'll just enjoy whatever I see.

Well, OK, I would really like to see a Vermilion Flycatcher again. They're such pretty birds. And maybe a Pyrrhuloxia, a roadrunner, a Phainopepla, various hummingbirds... there are all kinds of fun birds to see down there. Mustn't forget binoculars!

I decided I wanted a new swimsuit (for those hotel pools), so I ordered a Lands End suit from Amazon. I would have preferred to order it from Lands End, but I earned $80 worth of Amazon gift cards through the ABCD study recently. I don't understand why there are Lands End swimsuits on Amazon, but anyway, I bought one, it came a few days later, and I'm happy with it. 

I told the twins they need to try on their swimsuits. I can always grab the next larger size at Target, but I need to know that I need to do that.

The cats are getting their nails clipped on Tuesday. I see the orthodontist. That's all that's scheduled. I got my hair cut this past week. 

I have to finish the biography of William McKinley. It's due next Sunday and I certainly do not want to bring it on the trip! But I'm finding it slow going. I will have to make a reading schedule for it.

I have a whole week to get ready. Must not stress out. It will be fine.

***

This past week was OK. I tried my new plan of two days a week on each of these things: files, lifting weights, and yard work. I worked on the files both Monday and Thursday, and that was very successful. I got a lot done in 30 minutes. 

Lifting weights on Tuesday and Friday, on the other hand, was a total failure. Did not go near the weights either day. 

Yard work was mixed. I spent 30 minutes on it on Wednesday and was truly amazed by how much I got done. I filled the big compost bin with leaves and branches. But on Saturday it was cold and I didn't want to go out. I did take a walk, all bundled up. I don't like the cold wind that's been blowing.

So I'll try it again this week, see what happens. If I could spend two days on the files and one day on the yard, that wouldn't be bad. I should switch the days, though -- Wednesday looks like bad weather. So maybe I'll work in the yard on Tuesday and Friday, see if I feel like lifting weights on Wednesday and Saturday. I don't know what the problem is with the weights. I used to lift weights three times a week, every week. But that was a long time ago.

Cooking was mixed, too. I made Grandma Peg's goulash and nacho casserole, both of which provided a day of leftovers, too, but that's all I did. We had frozen pizza one day and fried sandwiches another. It's OK. We're having the stir-fry tonight (that I had planned for last Thursday). And I'm going to forget about the corned beef & cole slaw tacos idea -- I thought I would be able to buy corned beef at the grocery store, but maybe it's the kind of thing you have to make yourself or get at a restaurant. I don't know a lot about beef. 

I've gone for a walk on 7 of the last 9 days, which is very good for me. I'm not enjoying it -- the cold, the wind -- but there is no ice, so I make myself go out. And there are starting to be rewards, the first spring flowers and all that.

Most of the week was spent worrying about something that is not my business and so I probably should not write about it here, so I won't. I think there will be less to worry about this week.

It should be a decent week, with lots to get done, but plenty of time to get it all done.

March madness

If I hadn't used the post title last week, I might have called this one "notes from a zombie," because it's the first day of Daylight Saving Time and that's how I feel -- senselessly, since I didn't have to get up early today. I woke up at 7 -- old time -- a few minutes before my alarm would have gone off if it had been set -- which it hadn't been, because it's Sunday -- but I still felt tired, and I considered rolling over and going back to sleep.

And then I thought: no, don't do that, because it's 8 am new time. So I got up. Or rather, I grabbed my phone and checked my email and did Wordle. And then I got up. Which should have been fine, because I'd turned off my light at midnight, so that's almost enough sleep. I should be feeling fairly rested today. But I'm doing that time change thing where you check the time every few minutes -- or seconds -- and think, OMG, it can't be THAT late already. (For instance, right now apparently it's 1:03 pm and it feels like it might be about 11 am.) Which induces zombiness. So that's how I feel. And I know you all do too (unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii). Welcome to zombie-land, all of us.

This was kind of a terrible week, so I'm basically really glad it's over and don't care that much about the time change (I'll care about it tomorrow, when I have to get the twins up an hour earlier than usual).

First, on Tuesday, we had a tiny little ice storm, barely visible, but it was enough to cause my next-door neighbor to slip on her driveway (i.e., the driveway to the house that we own) and break her ankle. I would have missed the whole thing except that I saw the lights of the ambulance reflecting on the living room wall (I was down the hall in the kids' room). She had to go to the hospital and didn't come home until Thursday night. 

My main involvement with her disaster (so far) has been tracking down a shower chair for her (I borrowed one from another neighbor), texting back and forth with her and a friend of hers and another neighbor, and stressing out because I wasn't doing enough. Oh, and thinking about "what if it had been me?" which was good for some sleepless nights. She asked me, via text, if I could pick up some groceries for her teenagers -- and then it occurred to me that what she was really asking was could I make dinner for her teenagers. And I froze. Froze so solid I couldn't reply to her text to say yes, I'd get groceries. 

Make dinner for someone else! Of course, when someone is injured or ill or whatever, that's what you do, you make dinner for them. When I had my heart procedure and couldn't use my right hand/arm very well for a couple of weeks, two people in my book group brought us dinner. One brought a jar of spaghetti sauce and some pre-made fresh pasta from the deli, and the other made a veggie lasagna which fed us for two or three nights. I was so grateful to both of them, I was just overwhelmed. 

So why couldn't I do that for my neighbors? It's a real puzzle. Instead of going to the store and getting some ingredients, I went into a tailspin. I panicked. I thought about moving, or even just driving away and not coming back. I thought about killing myself (don't worry, I'm not going to do that). Various people I told about my dilemma got a little cross with me (Rocket Boy, my sister). I agreed with them! But I couldn't do it. I got my mind all wrapped around the idea that they wouldn't like what I cook, that I would make a mistake (or several) in the cooking process and the food would turn out horribly, that they would just throw it in the trash -- I don't know why I went down that road. It makes no sense.

One factor possibly contributing to the problem was the second bad thing about the week: the twins' 15th birthday. I have given up trying to understand why I hate their birthday so much. Well, that's not true, I actually spend a lot of time each year obsessing about the reason why. Is it because I'm reliving the terrible two days I spent in the hospital trying to have them? Am I remembering the bad birthdays of the past: the year we invited everyone in both their preschool classes, rented a party room, and only two kids came; or the year Teen B's three best friends not only said they couldn't come to his party, they all dumped him the next day (which was also the year I threw out my back the morning we were supposed to bring treats to school for their birthday)? Or could it have something to do with my general hatred for the month of March, which also happens to be not only the month my father died, but also the month my mother had a nervous breakdown (back in 1970) and had to be hospitalized for several weeks?

I don't know. All I know is that I dread their birthday more than I dread any other day of the year -- no other day comes close, really. I used to kind of dread my birthday, and Mother's Day, because I felt like my family neglected me those days, but now I do things for myself on those days and it's fine, more than fine. 

And their birthday has gotten so easy! We don't do parties anymore. If they wanted to organize an outing with a friend, of course I'd make that happen, but they don't want to. (And nobody they know seems to invite them to celebrate a birthday either. Maybe it's just not a teen boy thing.)  I don't wear myself out making fancy train cakes or cat cakes. I went to Safeway on the morning of the 9th and bought a white cake for Teen A and a chocolate cake for Teen B (their choice) and everyone was happy. Oh, and no fancy dinners either -- we got MacDonald's, their choice.

Presents are normally a little stressful, but they were pretty easy this year. One of my sisters sent checks and the other sent two games (both excellent choices). So I got the kids each some cash and just a few little presents (some new t-shirts from Target and a keyboard from Goodwill for Teen A; a graphic novel and an IOU for a new water bottle for Teen B). And in lieu of "wrapping" I just stuck everything in old gift bags (first checking to see if the existing tag matched the kid I was giving the present to). They were amused: "Haven't I seen this bag, like, a million times before?"

So I don't know why I hate their birthday. I only know I do. Actually, once I got it all set up and we went through it -- opened gifts and cards, lit candles, sang happy birthday, had some cake -- I was fine. It was over and all the stress evaporated. 

And the next day I texted my neighbor and asked her if I could help with anything, but she said her brother was helping her that day, so she was fine. I check my phone every so often to see if she needs anything, but there have been no requests. So there you go. I completely blew it during the time she really needed help, and now she doesn't need me. Maybe she'll need me at some point next week.

***

Anyway, the bad week is over, and now we move on to the middle of March. I have two weeks before Spring Break and I have some ideas about how I want to spend them. I want to start building some new habits, so I thought these two weeks would be a nice contained time in which to experiment with them. 

Right now, my weekdays follow this schedule (roughly). Each # represents an hour or two.

1. Get up, get the kids off to school
2. Feed the cats, eat breakfast, do basic routines like putting away the clean dishes, starting a load of laundry, doing the breakfast dishes
3. Do some house cleaning, Fly Lady missions, decluttering
4. Write for a while
5. Eat lunch, maybe take a walk, maybe do an errand
   
6. Try to earn some money through Mechanical Turk
7. Work on the project of the month -- taxes, files, etc.
8. Kids come home
9. Dinner prep
10. Evening stuff: homework, whatever I didn't get to during the day
11. Feed cats, kids to bed, finish up the dishes, take a shower, read for a while, go to bed
    

For the next two weeks, I'm going to make a few slight changes to this schedule. 

First, I'm going to move my walks to the end of the day, around 4:30 or 5 pm (in the slot called "Kids come home"). Might as well make use of the extra hour of daylight we've just been given. Also, leaving the house soon after the kids come home is usually a good plan, to get away from their grumpiness, give them some time to decompress.

Second, I'm going to flip my money-earning (such as it is) and my project work. So I'll eat lunch (#5) and then work on a project for an hour, before spending an hour or two trying to earn money.

Finally, and this is the (slightly) interesting part, I'm going to divide my "project" time into three types of activities. On Mondays and Thursdays I will spend an hour on the files and piles in the desk room. On Tuesdays and Fridays I will lift weights. And on Wednesdays and Saturdays I will work outside (if it isn't snowing), mostly picking up leaves and branches to put in the compost bin. I want to start working in the yard again, but I can't do anything until I pick up all the mess that's everywhere (I kind of stopped paying attention to the yard last summer).

So, it's a very low-key plan, but I'm interested in it. And if it's a total failure, if I can't get myself to pick up a hand weight on Tuesday or a dead branch on Wednesday, that's fine. I can regroup in April.

***

The only things on the calendar for this week are my parent group on Tuesday and a haircut on Wednesday. I've even planned my meals already:

• Tonight: Grandma Peg's goulash
• Monday: leftovers
• Tuesday: nacho casserole
• Wednesday: leftovers
• Thursday: Thai pineapple fried rice
• Friday: maybe corned beef & cole slaw tacos, unless I lose my nerve
  

Pretty much any of these (except Friday's experiment) could be delivered next door in a pinch (and then we'd have pancakes or fried sandwiches or whatever).

Well, it's already 2:30, horrible new time, so I think I might go to the grocery store. Or have a piece of leftover birthday cake. Or both. It's all good.

Notes from a zombie

I'm not really a zombie today, but I felt like one earlier -- due to the antics of two Very Bad Kitties last night. 

It started with a sandwich. Teen A chose Panera as our restaurant for the night, not my favorite, but their soup is OK. For $50 I had a cup of broccoli cheddar soup and 1/2 a grilled cheese sandwich; Teen A had a bowl of chicken noodle soup and a drink; Teen B had a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of chicken noodle soup and a drink. $50 sure doesn't get you what it used to.

Anyway, Teen B wanted to bring half of his grilled cheese sandwich home, so I wrapped it in a napkin and brought it with us. And when we got home, like an idiot, I set it on the kitchen counter. We then went into the living room to do homework. Teen A and I were working on a paper when Baby Kitty came into the living room and started washing. Teen A said, "Oh, he's washing himself just like Sillers does after she eats." I said, "He hasn't eaten anything for a while, unless he found a crumb on the floor." Teen A said, "Well, he must have found something, because he's still chewing.

Oh no!

I ran into the kitchen, and there was the unwrapped sandwich, partially eaten, lying on the floor. Sigh. I threw it in the compost bin, cursing myself for my stupidity. (In the photo above, the compost bin is on the left, sitting on a little stool.)

Flash forward a few hours, twins are in bed, I'm in bed reading. I turn out my light and try to go to sleep. Baby Kitty, who has been dozing by my side, jumps off the bed and leaves the room. Then I hear a sound. What is that sound? (I'm trying to fall asleep, I don't want to hear a sound.) Oh! The compost bin!

I turn on the light and run into the kitchen, where Baby Kitty has upended the compost bin and is trying to remove the remains of the sandwich. "No no no," I hiss, and wonder what to do. It's too late to take the bag of compost to the bin outside. A mountain lion or a bear might be sniffing around (seriously). Finally I stash the whole compost bin in the garage and go back to bed.

Then Sillers gets into the act. Rustle, rustle. What is that noise? Again, it takes me a while to place it. Oh, it's the cat door to the garage. I turn on the light again and go out to the dining room. I open the door to the garage and let Sillers back in. She knows how to get into the garage (to explore what happened to the compost bin), but not how to get back into the house, so she scratches at the cat door until I hear her and rescue her. Baby Kitty, for all his brains, does not understand how to use the cat door (or is afraid to). Fortunately. And also fortunately, Sillers does not know how to upend the compost bin by herself.

After all that I have to sit up and read another chapter of my book to be able to get sleepy again. I finally turn off the light for good around 1:30 or so, and even then it is hard to fall asleep (Sillers decides to do some more meowing up and down the hallway). So I'm a bit of a zombie today. But it's OK. The compost bin is back in the kitchen, but I plan to empty it before bedtime tonight.

***

This was a better week, I think. We actually had ANOTHER shooting scare at the kids' school, but it was so clearly a repeat of the previous week's scam that the police didn't do very much. Just a very quick lockdown while they checked it out, and then the all clear. I'm glad they're taking it seriously, because one of these days it could be real, but I'm also glad they're aware that it's likely to be a scam. It must be very hard to know how best to handle these things.

The best news, for me, is that I got our taxes done -- submitted to our tax preparer, that is. She won't look at them for perhaps a month, and that is Just Fine with me. I don't want to hear from her for a month. I just want my part to get done, which now it is. I don't know why the taxes are so stressful for me, but they are they are they are. I was a nervous wreck until I got them submitted. I had them ready to go by Tuesday afternoon (February 28th) but our tax preparer had some trouble opening the portal for me, so I didn't get them in until Thursday. That's OK. It messed up the whole week, but that's OK. It's over.

Because I spent the whole week worrying about the taxes, I did hardly any Mechanical Turk -- earned about $3 total, I think. I don't care about that either. Maybe this week I'll do better.

Cooking didn't go very well, and I can't blame that on the taxes. I'll blame it on the New York Times. I had been planning to make a chicken dish from their website, "Sticky Coconut Chicken and Rice," the week before, but it got pushed to this week. Unfortunately, raw chicken doesn't like to be postponed. By the time I pulled it out of the fridge to cook it, it was two days past its expiration date. But I don't put much faith in expiration dates, so I cooked it anyway. I will never know whether that was (part of) the problem or not. We didn't get sick from it, so maybe not?

Anyway, the chicken dish was terrible! Bland, boring, and at the same time there was this sense of something bad. Maybe that was the old chicken. I don't know. We all hated it. After the twins had scraped their plates into the compost bin, I picked all the chicken pieces out of the pot and put them in the compost bin (and then took the bag out to the big bin outside). I put the leftover coconut rice in the fridge and had some the next day for lunch. But it was terrible! And then I thought, this is ridiculous, and dumped the rice in the compost and took IT out.

And I made a vow to the twins, and I'm going to try to stick to it -- No More Chicken. I don't like chicken, Rocket Boy doesn't like chicken, Teen A doesn't like chicken, and Teen B only sort of likes chicken. So why have I been cooking chicken? Because there are 50 quadrillion chicken recipes out there, many of them very easy, and being willing to eat chicken means you have access to those recipes.

But it doesn't matter. We don't like chicken and I'm not going to cook any more chicken. Chicken broth is fine -- I'm not a vegetarian purist. And the kids still like chicken noodle soup, so they can eat that (it grosses me out). But no cooking pieces of chicken meat, even cut up really really really small, or even pre-cooked chicken that you can buy in the deli section. No More Chicken.

I don't know what we're going to eat this week -- haven't planned it all out yet. Tonight I think we're having scrambled eggs, and tomorrow maybe just Nacho Cups (the twins' favorite). Tuesday I might try the New York Times' version of Mattar Paneer, which I will make with tofu rather than paneer (I like paneer, but who knows if the twins will, and anyway I'm not sure whether King Soopers carries it). 

Wednesday I don't know, and Thursday -- ack! ack! -- is the twins' birthday, so we should have something special, but I don't know what that will be. 

Having a birthday on a Thursday is sort of a pain, because lots of homework is always due on Friday. We'll have to postpone some of the celebration until the weekend -- or maybe even later than that. Rocket Boy actually FORGOT the twins' birthday was this week, that's worse than me. I didn't forget, I just didn't do anything to prepare. He and I were discussing it yesterday, and he suggested we do something for them during Spring Break, when we are planning to take a huge, complicated road trip that they will HATE. Sounds great to mix in some birthday stuff.

Oh well. They're turning 15, not 5. It'll all work out.

***

It just occurred to me that since it's now March, I should be making new month plans. 

Month of March:

• March's theme is what? It's the twins' birthday month and at the end we've got Spring Break. In between, it's cold and snowy and windy. So I guess it's Winter's Last Blast (there can be lots of snow in April, but by then you can tell it's not really winter anymore). March is perhaps a time to do all the winter things you've been putting off.
  
• Instead of choosing a new goal from my master list, I'm going to go back to the files and piles in the desk room (which were supposed to be my 1st Quarter project). I worked on them a little in February, but then the taxes took over. Now the taxes are submitted, so I'll go back to the files. I have three weeks before Spring Break -- I'll try to get something done.
  
• I'd like to do something special with each twin this month, related to their birthday, but I don't know if it will happen. I'll offer it and see what they say. Otherwise the "special things" can happen during Spring Break week.
  
• I don't think we'll do any socializing until Spring Break, so I won't worry about that.
• And the reading I've talked about in my reading posts: I'm working along on my five books from the pile by the bed, one of those will be the book group book, and I picked up my next presidential biography at the library today.

In the week ahead I have a lot of things to do: Teen A's IEP meeting is tomorrow morning, I need to get blood drawn, and I should go grocery shopping AND birthday shopping. Tuesday I have a physical and I should do some more shopping. Wednesday Teen B has three appointments (wires off at 11:30 am, dentist at 2 pm, and wires back on at 4 pm), so that's a lot of driving and nothing else will get done because he'll be with me. And Thursday is their birthday, which will require who knows what.

One other thing I did this week, quite by accident, was find a bunch of new ancestors (new to me, that is -- they've been dead for hundreds of years). I traced our matrilineal line as far back as I could go, which led me, surprisingly, to the Palatine Germans, a group of refugees who came here in the early 1700s, sponsored by Queen Anne of England. I had never heard of them before and I certainly didn't know I was related to them. But apparently I am. And because I was tracing my matrilineal line, I ended up with a lot of mothers. I mean, they're my great-great-XXX-grandmothers, but the point is that they were somebody's mothers, that's how they got on that line. I found myself wondering what that was like. Did Catharina/Katrina Schram Lampman, born in 1730 (or 1728) in New York, who gave birth to 12 children, ever give a birthday party? I'm guessing not.

Reading post: Books from the pile by my nightstand, part 2

February has ended, so it is time for another reading update. I chose five more books from the pile by my nightstand to read in February, four of which I finished in February (I finished the fifth today, March 1st).

1. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson. An excellent book, a painful book, which I have already written a lot about in other blog posts. I had so much trouble getting through this, but it is worth reading (if you're not inclined to depression). I'm keeping it, although I'm not sure where to put it. Right now, it's on a shelf on Rocket Boy's side of our bedroom, where a lot of serious nonfiction lives. He doesn't pay a lot of attention to those shelves, other than occasionally picking a book off them to read, so I think it can stay there for now.
   
2. Becoming by Michelle Obama. I found this in a little free library a while back, and since I'd always planned to read it, I nabbed it. I've also written about this already, but I'll just note here that it was good -- parts seemed a little too perfect, a little too smoothed over, but other parts felt very honest. I was going to put this back in a little free library, but now I feel like I want to keep it, so I'm trying to find room for it on the biography shelves. There is not actually any room on the biography shelves. This is a problem without a solution.
   
3. There There by Tommy Orange. Thinking about why some of the books in the pile sit there for a long time and don't get read... I heard about this when it was published and was very interested to read it -- a modern-day novel of Indians written by someone other than Louise Erdrich! But somehow I didn't get to it. Then I saw it in a little free library and grabbed it. But I still didn't read it. I know what I was worried about: I thought it had been over-praised and therefore wouldn't be very good, and also I thought it would be depressing. In fact, it's neither. I mean, it's a first novel, but it's much better than your average first novel. And even though the characters all have terrible lives, it's not truly depressing. What makes it not depressing is that you can tell the author, Tommy Orange, loves his characters. The book's title, There There, refers to Gertrude Stein's comment about Oakland: "there is no there there." But I felt as though it was also the author saying to his characters, "there, there," i.e., don't worry, it's going to be all right. Now, do I keep this? I was planning to return it to a little free library, but right now it's on my Indian books shelf (which is half of a double-stacked shelf that I have to do something about someday). Maybe I'll keep it a little while longer...
   
4. Fatal Remains by Eleanor Taylor Bland. The last Bland mystery I own, but not her last -- she wrote three more, so now I will have to track them down. I thought this would be my last book of the month, but I read it very quickly. It's an interesting installment in the series, including a lot of Black and Indian history, very appropriate for Black History Month. The mystery itself -- the identity of the killer -- was so not the point of the story that I kind of forgot about it. When the killer was revealed I was like, ho hum, who cares? The interesting mystery was the Black and Indian history. Anyway, I'm keeping it! Maybe someday I'll donate my nearly-complete Eleanor Taylor Bland collection to someone...
   
5. Mules and Men by Zora Neale Hurston. An anthropology/ethnography book, sort of -- a collection of stories she collected in Florida and elsewhere. Not at all what I thought it was going to be -- it's more like fiction than anthropology. But then it got more ethnographic. And then more fictional again. And more ethnographic. Anyway, it's an odd book, and I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone. But (shhh) I'm keeping it.

So, five more books read and they've all moved from the pile by my bed to our bookshelves -- NOT the goal here. I'm hoping to do better this month, actually get rid of some books.

For March, I have picked out five more books from the pile by the nightstand (see photo). I decided that since I don't read books by white men very often anymore, it was time to read some books by white men. So that's what these are: books by white men. I am really hoping that I won't like some of them and can send them to Goodwill without finishing them. But we'll see. They might all be good.

This isn't the end of the pile, but it's all I'm going to read from it for this year's Challenge, unless I give up on some of these quickly and decide to replace them with others from the pile. In April, May, and June, I plan to read books-I've-never-read that are sitting on the bookshelves in our bedroom. That is, books that have somehow earned a place in the permanent collection without ever having been read (by me). We will see how that goes. (And from July to December I plan to read books from elsewhere in the house.) But for March, I'm still working on the pile by the nightstand.

I was able to talk my book group into reading one of these (Loving Little Egypt by Thomas McMahon), so I don't have to add an extra book group book to my reading list this month. But it is time to read another presidential biography, so per Steve's recommendation I have requested William McKinley and His America by H. Wayne Morgan from Prospector and it will arrive someday (it's coming from the University of Wyoming and is already "in transit").